That Hammer - he looks like he knows he was responsible for some atrocities. No doubt the nightmares keep him awake at night and now the only job he can hold down is one where he appears once a week, behind a mask and doesn't have to talk to anyone.

They asked me to do it, I needed the money, I took the money. Not much, about 50 quid I think. The brief: to design a hammer in a West Ham kit. I did them a drawing of said hammer in an action pose, heading a football. In my sketch he was looking up at the ball. The people who made the costume clearly took my design too literally, and fixed the hammer’s pupils to be permanently looking up, as if surprised and delighted to see a heron land on his garage roof.

Despite this disaster, I was offered other mascot design jobs, which I shamefully took. They were mostly for charities or rugby league teams, but the occasional football project came up. Fulham wanted a knight. Wigan wanted a gorilla. Neither ended up being made, thankfully. The final straw came when Bristol City wanted a female cat. As a Swindon fan, I knew this was my opportunity to lumber one of our rivals with a mascot even more ridiculous than a foam hammer that can only look up. However, I got carried away and the drawing I submitted was deemed so offensive that I wasn’t asked to design any more mascots (on reflection, adding the detail of a bottle of scrumpy and a puddle of piss was probably a bit much).

Apologies for derailing the best thread on OTF in years. Please carry on and thank you for listening.

I'm glad that deadspin have picked up on this thread but they've not really got the hang of this yet have they? I mean the only ones that are really good in the ones they use are the ones that come from this thread. It's not about mascots looking at planes, or attending speeches, it's the juxtaposition of stupid costume and solemnity that is funny.

So did Emma when he/she stood very close to the Bayern Munich team bus.

According to this report, a Borussia Dortmund spokesperson claimed that "Emma is a very smart, seven-year-old bee who is fully aware that, for sartorial reasons, it is impossible for a bee to relieve themselves standing up and would therefore only have a Number One sitting down."